


The “in” of “Robin”

by chellerrific



Series: Rob and KF are boyfriends [1]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Bromance, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-11
Updated: 2012-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 08:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellerrific/pseuds/chellerrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally was smarter than he looked… usually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The “in” of “Robin”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Allie for the quick beta (and also being sexy).

Wally had no idea why he was here.

Well, actually, he _did_ know why he was here. But he didn’t know _why_.

Let’s try this again, from the beginning: it all started back when he and Robin had been hot on the trail of that creep Ivo after his monkeys (or MONQIs, whatever) had made off with Amazo’s parts. In their haste to catch up before Amazo could do too much damage, Robin did something he rarely—if ever—did: he let something slip.

_“Wait! Dude! They’re at my school!”_

Now, one of the very few things Wally knew about Robin was that he lived in Gotham. Everybody knew that was Batman’s base of operations. And Gotham Academy was the best school in the city—one of the best schools in the entire country, really. And Batman was obviously someone who was Wealthy and Connected (emphasis on the capital letters), so it stood to reason that Gotham Academy was where Rob went to school. So, this wasn’t really a revelation as _such_.

But this was still something concrete Wally heard come from Rob’s own mouth, a clue to unlocking the secret that was the Bat Family.

Wally knew he was playing with fire here. Almost nobody knew anything about Batman _or_ Robin, and Wally was pretty sure Bats would go to extreme and unpleasant lengths to keep it that way. All the same, he had to know.

As far as superheroes went, Wally’s life was an open book. An open _comic_ book, even, with everything drawn in bright colors, all there to be gleaned at a glance. They knew his name, they knew Flash was his uncle, hell, some of them had even been to his _house_ and met his _parents_.

In fact, Wally’s history was arguably the widest-open of anyone’s on the team. Kaldur was pretty upfront about most things—Wally knew he’d studied magic in Atlantis before hooking up with Aquaman and coming topside to play Barnacle Boy to his king’s Mermaid Man. But Wally didn’t really know what being Atlantean was really like, considering he was pretty awesome at a lot of things but breathing underwater just didn’t happen to one of them.

And Megan, well, he knew her real name, but he didn’t really know anything about her life on Mars before he met her. He knew she was J’onn’s niece, but from the numbers he was hearing, it seemed possible half the population of Mars could lay claim to that title. He knew she liked baking and sitcoms and looked great in mini-skirts and—well, little details were nice, but his point still remained.

Supey was an odd case. There admittedly didn’t seem to be a whole lot to his life to know. Wally had practically been there when he’d been _born_. But that didn’t mean Supey wasn’t still something of a mystery. After all, there was no way to know exactly what kind of info Cadmus spent those sixteen weeks spoon-feeding him. It was possible—even probable, really—that Supey was exactly what he seemed to be: a ball of muscle and angst and daddy issues who could stand to wear a shirt more but was overall a good guy. But Wally knew it was naïve to rule out the possibility that there could be something deeper, darker, more sinister to his youngest friend, and, as people often were forced to admit, usually with a heavy sigh and a lot of qualifications (“but then, he’d almost have to be”), Wally really was smarter than he looked.

And then there was Artemis, who was… Artemis. That was a kettle of awkward and confusion he didn’t feel like getting into at the moment.

But Robin. It dug at Wally that he knew so little about his best friend.

There, he said it. Robin was his best friend. They’d known each other for years and they had a natural rapport. He was pretty close with Kaldur too, and he was as close to Supey as he figured it was possible for almost anyone to get, and he certainly _wanted_ to be closer with Megan, but anyway, the point was, Rob was his best friend. And as far as Wally was concerned, that sort of thing was a two-way street—or at least, it was _supposed_ to be. He knew it wasn’t _really_ Rob’s fault, not entirely; Bats wanted him to keep things on the DL, and when Bats told you to do something, well, you kinda just did it.

(Once Wally tried to bribe Robin with a little information of his own, but as it turned out, the Boy Wonder already knew what “Wally” was short for. Wally would have stepped up his game a bit, but, as explained, there wasn’t a lot about his life that was private in that circle, and the things that _were_ —let’s just say there were some challenges he didn’t want accepted.)

So, hey. If Wally went on a little fact-finding mission of his own, Bats couldn’t really blame Rob. He _might_ , and he definitely _would_ blame Wally, but at least then Wally might _know_ something, and as GI Joe had taught him, knowing was half the battle. (What was the other half, anyway? Explosives, probably. Or getting the girl to say “yes.” Possibly it depended on the battle? Column A: Knowing, Column B: Variable.)

In conclusion, that was why he was walking through the courtyard outside of Gotham Academy that afternoon. Regular classes were over, but there were still plenty of kids around. Wally knew Rob wasn’t one of them; he’d made sure to come on a day he knew his pal was busy Dynamic Duoing it up with Bats elsewhere. (Once again, smarter than he looked.)

On the other hand, Wally wasn’t really sure what he was looking for. He preferred not to be completely obvious, all though there was already a mark against him that he was in civvies instead of those uniforms everyone else wore—which, by the way, he was _not_ complaining about; did all private school uniforms have skirts that short? _Hello_ , ladies—but there was little he could do about that beyond the old “mug for disguise” routine. Still, something told him that might just draw more attention, rather than less, so civvies would have to do.

The problem was that he just didn’t know where to start. He didn’t even know Rob’s first name. Unless it was, in fact, Robin. No, while Wally wouldn’t put it past the little troll to do something like that, Bats was way too paranoid. He’d only seen Rob without his shades or his mask once, and then his eyes had been closed and covered in pie… that was a long story. Anyway the point there was he didn’t even know what _color_ Robin’s eyes really were. Logic would dictate brown. He was pretty pasty, though, so blue was a strong possibility, but blue eyes were becoming less common, so he would have to assume it was brown. Still, leave it to Robin to have gray or amber or _violet_ eyes or something.

Right. This was pointless. He was going to have to go inside and look for himself. There might be class photos hanging on the walls or something. Wouldn’t that be convenient?

He strolled in, trying to look as nonchalant as possible. He knew from experience that if he projected an aura of belonging, people were less likely to realize he didn’t. A few people cast glances at him, but he had a story worked out: he was here to pick up his little brother Robin. So it wasn’t a very intricate story, but the thing about lying was that too much detail was usually as bad as too little. He knew that from experience too. Er, that is, unless his parents asked, then he knew nothing about it.

Gotham Academy looked different by day. All though maybe it was more the lack of holes in the walls and shattered glass all over the floors and killer robots shooting lasers at him that made it feel like a different place than he’d been on that night. Wally was actually pretty impressed it was back to normal already. Yeah, this whole place reeked of M-O-N-E-Y.

He didn’t see any class photos hung up at first glance, but it was a big school and he was only just starting. At the end of the hall there _was_ a trophy case, though.

Would Rob have any trophies? Did Gotham Academy have a gymnastics team, or maybe an Illegal Computer Hacking Club? “This Certificate Hereby Signifies That [Robin J. Wonderboy] Successfully Hacked Into NASA’s Mainframe.” And there would be a photo underneath of him being arrested…

No. Probably not that. Even something like gymnastics made Wally doubtful; Robin was quite the little acrobat (no pun intended), but that was the problem: too obvious.

Still, it didn’t hurt to look, and he thought he saw some cheerleading trophies in the case, and if there were photos to go with _those_ , well, there’s no way he could call this trip a waste even if he found nothing at all out about Robin.

Football? No. Hockey? Maybe… no. Lacrosse? Wally didn’t even really know what lacrosse _was_.

Then a plaque in the middle of the case caught his eye. A dark-haired little squirt of a kid was holding up a big trophy with the caption _2011 GOTHAM ACADEMY MATHLETE HONOREE DICK GRAYSON_.

 _Mathletes_?

 _Dick_?

Wally stared at the kid. Could it be? The hairstyle was different, and he had to squint to mentally draw on a mask…

Dick Grayson, Mathlete. And Rob had had the nerve to laugh about “Wallace.”

A memory clicked then, something he’d heard Robin say once: _Override RG04_. RG. Richard Grayson? Was he stretching here?

He squinted at the photo some more.

“What about archery? Oh! And your name is Artemis!”

“Ah, no, I don’t have very good hand-eye coordination.”

Wally froze. _No way_. There was _no way_.

But there coming around the corner were two blond girls, and yep, he knew that long ponytail and perpetually sullen and hostile look. He didn’t know those legs in that little skirt though—

No time for that. He whipped around the side of the trophy case, willing them not to walk past him. He could always make a run for it, and of course there was no way he’d be caught, but, well, in that case he was pretty sure he might as well just throw up a neon sign saying _WALLY WAS HERE_. (Maybe he could say it was his uncle? Would they buy that? Barry Allen: Secret Perv for High School Girls in Uniforms. On second thought, maybe not a good idea.)

Fortunately for him, it never came to that. A girl with red hair waved them over, and they never passed by his hiding place or even looked back at the trophy case at all.

Even though he really wanted to get a closer look at Artemis’s new legs—er, new _friends’_ legs—he figured he’d pushed his luck enough. He slipped back out the front doors of Gotham Academy and beat a hasty—though not super-hasty—retreat out of there, his mind buzzing.

He was pretty sure the boy in the photo, Dick Grayson, was Robin. And he was _positive_ the girl walking around the school in the school uniform was Artemis. But what was she doing at Gotham Academy? Didn’t she live in Star City like Green Arrow? And did she know more about Robin than Wally did? Did Rob—Dick—whatever—know Artemis went to his school? Did they ever see each other during classes? Artemis was older but that didn’t rule out the possibility—

Wally found jealousy pricking at the back of his brain, and the most annoying part was he wasn’t sure _which_ of them he was really jealous of.

He sighed. Wally was smarter than he looked, but still pretty stupid sometimes.


End file.
